Ann Rigney (Dublin, 9 December 1957) is an Irish/Dutch cultural scholar and Professor of Comparative Literature at Utrecht University. Her research focuses on the transnational interaction between narrative and cultural memory and is authoritative in the field of Memory Studies.
Rigney was born in Dublin and studied English and French at University College Dublin (BA 1978, MA 1980). In 1987 she gained her PhD at the University of Toronto in Comparative Literature . From 1988 to 2000 she was a lecturer in Literary Theory at the Comparative Literature programme, University of Utrecht; in 2000 she was appointed Professor of Comparative Literature at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. In 2003 she was appointed to the Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of Utrecht. [1]
Rigney is married to the Dutch cultural historian Joep Leerssen; they have two children.[ citation needed ]
Most of Rigney's research deals with the interactive dynamics between narrative (in literature and other media) and cultural memory. [2] Her early work dealt with narrative and imaginative strategies in history-writing and historical novels, with special attention to writers like Jules Michelet, Thomas Carlyle and Sir Walter Scott. She then turned to more general models of how the past is configured in the present-day imagination, and to the question how this imagination is expressed and communicated. Building on the earlier work of Hayden White, Pierre Nora and Aleida Assmann, Rigney's research focuses on the dynamics of cultural memory: how are memories expressed across different media and how do they move between different audiences, generations or nationalities?
Rigneys work has recently shifted from a nineteenth-century to a contemporary focus. Her work since 2000 has dealt with the poetics and function of public apologies [3] and with the cultural memory of political activism [4]
Among Rigney's theoretical concepts and models are
Rigney has evinced a wish to see Memory Studies move beyond its "traumatic paradigm", i.e. its tendency to concentrate on those collective memories that involve suffering and catastrophes. [9]
In her historiographical theory she resists a view of history centered on ideal-typical historians (as academics in history departments writing archive-based books on the social and political history of their own country); this, she argues, fails to do justice to the wide range of practices, academic and otherwise, through which societies take account of the past. [10]
Rigney's book Imperfect Histories was awarded the 2001 Jean-Pierre Barricelli Award by the American Conference on Romanticism. [11] She held visiting research fellowships at the University of Liège (1984-1985), Trinity College Dublin (1995), the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (2009-2010), [12] the University of Konstanz (research group History and Memory, 2011), [13] and at the Lichtenberg Kolleg (Institute for Advanced Study), University of Göttingen (2012). [14]
She was one of the working group leaders in the COST action "In Search for Transcultural Memory in Europe" (2012-2016). This led to the establishment of the Network in Transnational Memory Studies (NITMES), which won a €59,000 grant from NWO, the Netherlands national funding agency for scientific research, in 2015.
In 2018 she was awarded a European Research Council Advanced grant for the research project Remembering Activism: The Cultural Memory of Protest in Europe (REACT). [15] [16]
Rigney has been an elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since in 2005. [17] She is also an elected member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen), and of Academia Europaea. She holds an honorary doctorate from Aarhus University. [18]
She is a founding member of the Memory Studies Association and sits on its advisory board; she also sits on the advisory board of the journal Memory Studies and of the Memory Studies book series (Palgrave Macmillan).
In 2022 she was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy. [19]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Comparative literature studies is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across linguistic, national, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role similar to that of the study of international relations but works with languages and artistic traditions, so as to understand cultures 'from the inside'". While most frequently practised with works of different languages, comparative literature may also be performed on works of the same language if the works originate from different nations or cultures in which that language is spoken.
Paul Gilroy is an English sociologist and cultural studies scholar who is the founding Director of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Race and Racism at University College London (UCL). Gilroy is the 2019 winner of the €660,000 Holberg Prize, for "his outstanding contributions to a number of academic fields, including cultural studies, critical race studies, sociology, history, anthropology and African-American studies".
Cultural memory is a form of collective memory shared by a group of people who share a culture. The theory posits that memory is not just an individual, private experience but also part of the collective domain, which both shapes the future and our understanding of the past. It has become a topic in both historiography, which emphasizes the process of forming cultural memory, and cultural studies, which emphasizes the implications and objects of cultural memory.
Bryan Reynolds, Claire Trevor Professor, Distinguished Professor, and Chancellor's Professor at the University of California-Irvine, is an American critical theorist, performance theorist, and Shakespeare scholar who developed the combined sociopolitical theory, performance aesthetics, and research methodology known as transversal poetics. He is also a playwright, director, performer, and cofounder of the Transversal Theater Company, an Amsterdam-based collective of American and European artists, which has produced a number of his works. Reynolds received his bachelor's degree in English Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and his master's and doctoral degrees in English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University. He has been a Professor of Drama at the University of California, Irvine since 1998. He has held visiting professorships at the University of London-Drama, the University of Amsterdam-Theater Studies, Utrecht University-Theater Studies, University of Cologne-American Studies, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main-American Studies, University College Utrecht-Arts and Humanities, the University of California, San Diego-Theatre, Literature, Cognitive Science, the American University of Beirut-English, University of Tsukuba-Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Nairobi-Department of Literature, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt-Communications, University of Lorraine-Arts, Sciences, & Business Management, INSEEC Business School -Marketing, Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon, École supérieure des sciences commerciales d'Angers; and he has taught at Deleuze Camp at Schloss Wahn, University of Cologne, Germany, and the Grotowski Institute in Wrocław, Poland, among other academic and performing arts institutions. Reynolds is also a regular contributor to Freeskier Magazine, where he publishes articles from his ongoing research on extreme sports.
Mineke Schipper is a Dutch author of non-fiction and fiction. As a scholar she is best known for her work on comparative literature mythologies and intercultural studies.
Hoda Elsadda is Chair in the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at the University of Manchester. She serves as Co-Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW) in the UK, Associate Editor of the Online Edition of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, member of the Board of Directors of the Global Fund for Women, member of the Advisory Board of the Durham Modern Languages Series, and Core Group Member of the Arab Families Working Group. Elsadda is also the Co-founder and current Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the Women and Memory Forum.
Joseph Theodoor "Joep" Leerssen is a Dutch comparatist and cultural historian. He is professor of European studies at the University of Amsterdam, where he also holds a Royal Netherlands Academy Research Professorship. He was awarded the Spinozapremie in 2008.
Maria Gertrudis "Mieke" Bal is a Dutch cultural theorist, video artist, and Professor Emerita in Literary Theory at the University of Amsterdam. Previously, she was also Academy Professor of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and co-founder of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam.
Johanna Francisca Theodora Maria "José" van Dijck is a new media author and a distinguished university professor in media and digital society at Utrecht University since 2017. From 2001 to 2016 she was a professor of Comparative Media Studies where she was the former chair of the Department of Media Studies and former dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Amsterdam. She is the author of ten (co-)authored and (co-)edited books including Mediated Memory in the Digital Age; The Culture of Connectivity.; and The Platform Society. Public Values in a Connective World. Her work has been translated into many languages and distributed to a worldwide audience.
Udo J. Hebel is a German professor of American studies. He has been president of the University of Regensburg since 1 April 2013. He was selected as one of the ten best university rectors in Germany by the German Association of University Professors and Lecturers.
Marianne Hirsch is the William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and Professor in the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality.
Gloria Daisy Wekker is an Afro-Surinamese Dutch emeritus professor and writer who has focused on gender studies and sexuality in the Afro-Caribbean region and diaspora. She was the winner of the Ruth Benedict Prize from the American Anthropological Association in 2007.
Elizabeth Edwards, is a visual and historical anthropologist.
Feminist rhetoric emphasizes the narratives of all demographics, including women and other marginalized groups, into the consideration or practice of rhetoric. Feminist rhetoric does not focus exclusively on the rhetoric of women or feminists but instead prioritizes the feminist principles of inclusivity, community, and equality over the classic, patriarchal model of persuasion that ultimately separates people from their own experience. Seen as the act of producing or the study of feminist discourses, feminist rhetoric emphasizes and supports the lived experiences and histories of all human beings in all manner of experiences. It also redefines traditional delivery sites to include non-traditional locations such as demonstrations, letter writing, and digital processes, and alternative practices such as rhetorical listening and productive silence. In her book, Rhetorical Feminism and This Thing Called Hope (2018), Cheryl Glenn describes rhetorical feminism as, "a set of tactics that multiplies rhetorical opportunities in terms of who counts as a rhetor, who can inhabit an audience, and what those audiences can do." Rhetorical feminism is a strategy that counters traditional forms of rhetoric, favoring dialogue over monologue and seeking to redefine the way audiences view rhetorical appeals.
Imagology is a branch of comparative literature. More specifically, it is concerned with "the study of cross-national perceptions and images as expressed in literary discourse". While it adopts a constructivist perspective on national stereotypes and national character, it does emphasize that these stereotypes may have real social effects. It was developed in the 1950s with practitioners in France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. It never gained much of a foothold in anglophone academia. This may be attributed to imagology's skewed relationship to Edward Said's influential Orientalism, which is much better known in this context.
Mayke de Jong is a Dutch historian and Professor Emerita of Medieval History at Utrecht University. Her research focuses on the political and religious history of the early Middle Ages.
Astrid van Oyen is currently professor of archaeology at Radboud University, Nijmegen. She is a leading archaeologist studying the social, economic and cultural aspects of empire, rural economies, craft production, and storage in Italy and the western provinces.
Emily Susan Apter is an American academic, translator, editor and professor. Her areas of research are translation theory, language philosophy, political theory, critical theory, continental philosophy, history and theory of comparative literature, psychoanalysis, and political fiction. She is currently Silver Professor of French and Comparative Literature and Chair of the Department of French Literature, Thought and Culture at New York University.
Catherine Elizabeth Rigby is a scholar in the interdisciplinary field of environmental humanities.
Joyce Outshoorn is a professor emeritus of Leiden University. She served as head of the Women's Studies Department from 1987 to 1999. Simultaneously between 1992 and 2000, she was chair of the Netherlands Research School of Women's Studies. From 2007 to 2011, she served on the Steering Committee of the Feminism and Citizenship project (FEMCIT) funded the European Union. She was honored with the Career Achievement Award for 2009 by the European Consortium for Political Research.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |
